YouTube Debuts "Capture" iPhone App for Recording on the Go

Taking on all the video sharing apps that have been cropping up lately

The new YouTube Capture app

YouTube is making a play for the social video sharing market. That's a strange thing to say since, in essence, YouTube is the social video sharing market. But there's been a crop of apps recently that want to do for video what Instagram has done for photos.

None of them has managed to do it, which could mean that they just aren't any good or, maybe, that videos are inherently different to photos and people relate differently to them.

In any case, YouTube is not taking any chances and has now launched YouTube Capture for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. The app, as the name suggests, aims to make it easy to capture video and share it online.

Video capture, in fact video uploads were missing from the Google-built YouTube app, but there's more to it than this.

The reason YouTube built a stand-alone app and not a feature into the existing one is to simplify and speed up the process.

Users can simply pull their phones out and start recording with only a few tabs. Then, they can edit the video and add some corrections straight from their phones, before uploading it to YouTube and sharing it to Google+, Facebook or Twitter.

All in all, it's a great app for recording and sharing video and it gives a run for their money to all the existing ones. Add the YouTube name behind it and the robust sharing options and it's going to be hard to compete.

What's even more interesting, though it's hardly the first time, is that the app is only available for iOS devices for now. Google said an Android app is in the works, but it's not here now.

Granted, the need for such an app was greater on iOS, but it does show that Google will go to where the users are and plenty of them are on the iPhone. With its relationship with Apple souring, Google needs great apps to keep Apple in check.